Baghdad Quiet as Curfew Bars Cars and Pedestrians

By MICHAEL LUO; Reporting was contributed by Qais Mizher, Omar al-Neami, Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Ali Adeeb, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Kirkuk and Mosul.

Published: October 1, 2006

After a troubling and deadly week, Iraq's capital was mostly silent and still on Saturday, except for the occasional whup-whup of a military helicopter overhead and the rare pedestrian testing the limits of a daylong curfew.

Uncertainty remained, however, over what exactly prompted the curfew on vehicle and pedestrian traffic, called Friday night without explanation by the Iraqi prime minister's office. Although vehicle bans have been frequent, it was the first time since the war began that pedestrians had been banned from Baghdad's streets.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a United States military spokesman, said a number of factors, including an increase in suicide bombings and the rash of violence since the start of Ramadan last week, had led military officials to ask the Iraqi government to impose the curfew.

''We've found curfews implemented intermittently have been very effective in the past,'' he said.

But Brig. Qasim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry, referred to a more specific threat. ''We have information about a group of terrorists planning to attack civilians by car bombs,'' he said.

Some residents flouted the curfew on Saturday, shopping for groceries for the evening meal to break the fast for Ramadan, running errands and loitering on the street, albeit mostly off the main roads.

In Toubchi, a mostly Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad, a line of people waited at a bakery on Saturday afternoon to buy bread, and a few shoppers stopped at the lone pharmacy that was open. Other people headed to prayer at the mosque.

In Adhamiya, a Sunni neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad, the shops were mostly closed.

Ahmed Khalaf was driving alone on Army Canal Highway, which bisects eastern Baghdad, but was puzzled by how empty it was, when he was stopped at a police checkpoint. He had gone to sleep and woke up without turning on the news. He said he had told the officers, ''I have no idea about the curfew.''

The police were understanding and let him go, he said, telling him that others had been making the same mistake.

The curfew was announced Friday night shortly after news began to leak on Iraqi television that the compound of Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the largest bloc of Sunni parties, had been raided by the United States military and that a man connected to him was being held on suspicion of helping to plan a bombing.

The United States military said in a statement on Saturday that it had detained a member of Mr. Dulaimi's security detail, identified by Mr. Dulaimi as Khodar Farhan Ghargan, 35. The guard is believed to be a member of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the statement said, adding that the government had intelligence indicating that he was part of a terrorist cell that was planning a series of attacks, possibly using suicide vests, in the heavily guarded Green Zone.

The troops did not enter Mr. Dulaimi's residence, the statement said, but did search the guard's car and the security trailer. Colonel Johnson, the American spokesman, said no explosive devices had been found.

Military officials later issued a second statement emphasizing that the detention of Mr. Dulaimi's bodyguard ''in no way implies'' that the Sunni political leader was associated with ''any illegal activity.''

Mr. Dulaimi denounced the charges against his guard, comparing them to the faulty American intelligence about illicit Iraqi weapons before the war. ''This information caused them to occupy Iraq,'' he said. ''Now they are doing the same thing with me just to stop my hard work for Iraqi unity.''

But Friday's raid is likely to bolster accusations long made by rival Shiite political leaders against their Sunni Arab counterparts that their guards and staff are insurgents. The American military has expressed concerns that Iraqi political parties have been largely unwilling to sever their links with the militias that many command.

Mithal al-Alousi, a respected independent Sunni Arab, said most Iraqis knew that many political leaders were also militia commanders. ''The government should work to investigate this incident and if they discover that Dulaimi knew about this stuff in his house, they should arrest him,'' he said. ''There is no parliamentary immunity for killers.''

Violence persisted elsewhere in the country. In the northern city of Tal Afar, a car bomb exploded at 8 a.m., killing two people and wounding 33 others, all civilians. In Kirkuk, a car bomb exploded at 8:30 a.m. at the home of a police official, wounding him, his wife and four others. Another one exploded at 8 p.m. at the home of another police official, wounding 17 civilians. An American soldier from the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Second Infantry Division, died in a Humvee accident near Mosul.

But at Yarmuk Hospital in western Baghdad, the only patients who came in Saturday had complained of illness, an emergency worker said. It was a rare respite from the normal.